Pole-sitter Ben Young continued to ramp up the pace at the fourth round of the Bridgestone Canadian Superbike Championship on Saturday, topping FP2 at Atlantic Motorsport Park, presented by Pro Cycle and Canadian Kawasaki.
The GP Bikes Pro Superbike championship leader went back and forth with rival Alex Dumas in the second half of the session – at one point with only 0.007 seconds separating them – before putting himself back at the top for good with a time of 1:07.942 in the final few minutes.
The Van Dolder’s Home Team BMW was the only rider to break into the 1:07 mark just as he did in qualifying a day ago, representing a difficult benchmark for the rest of the field entering race one on Saturday.
However, his advantage was cut in half compared to Friday’s qualifying, as Dumas wound up just 0.367 seconds off the top of the timesheets in FP2.
The Economy Lube Ducati star admitted he was working through various setup changes on Friday, but appeared to be more comfortable on Saturday morning as he eyes his first win of the season (and first aboard the Panigale V4) this afternoon.
The EFC Group BMW team will have work to do ahead of race one, after Sam Guerin crashed for the second time in as many sessions following his Q2 crash a day ago.
Guerin was thankfully unhurt in both incidents and has flashed strong pace when on track as he ended the morning third-fastest, running only marginally behind Young and Dumas prior to his latest crash.
Jordan Szoke would go fourth-fastest in FP2, completing a familiar top four that has been a step ahead of the rest of the field so far this weekend, with Szoke hoping to claw his way to the front of that group aboard his CKM Kawasaki.
Rounding out the top five was Sport Bike championship leader Sebastien Tremblay, who made significant progress for Turcotte Performance Suzuki after an unusually quiet qualifying.
Tremblay wasn’t concerned after putting himself fifth on the Sport Bike grid and seems to have fixed whatever setup issues he was having, posting a Superbike time of 1:09.479 that would have put him on Sport Bike pole a day ago.
Running only eighth was local star John Fraser, who revealed following the session that he is unlikely to race on Saturday as he continues to recover from a serious injury earlier in the season.
The RLS Contracting Suzuki rider hasn’t ruled out a race two appearance but was still feeling the effects of the injury on Friday and in FP2, which limited the 19-year-old in qualifying for his home round and season debut.
The feature class will now prepare for their 22-lap race one on Saturday, scheduled for approximately 3 pm local time (2 pm ET) at Atlantic Motorsport Park.
Full results can be found on the series’ official website.
